U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said she will open an official inquiry into whether the administration hid President Trump’s plans to redesign the golf course at East Potomac Park on the National Mall, saying the chain of events was unbelievable.
The Biden appointee plans to name a special master to get to the bottom of her suspicion that Mr. Trump has been working behind the scenes to shutter the course and impose his plans for a redesign, even as government lawyers told her no firm plans were in place.
She has steamed for weeks over what she saw as a betrayal of her trust after the National Park Service cut hundreds of trees on Oct. 10, giving her — and the DC Preservation League, which has sued to stop the plans — less than a day’s notice.
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“The president of the United States seems pretty intent on this golf course,” Judge Reyes said during another heated hearing with Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr.
The No. 3 official at the Justice Department has taken over arguing for Mr. Trump and the Interior Department in what has become a constitutional clash.
Mr. Trump has complicated his team’s job by firing off social media posts making declarations about the golf course and his plans for it — plans that undermine or contradict what government lawyers and park service officials told Judge Reyes.
In a hearing last week, administration officials said they were aware of no contract to work on the course and there were no plans to close it on Nov. 15, as Mr. Trump suggested.
The park service then announced plans for a partial closure of Hains Point, the peninsula the park stands on, and justified them as safety-related.
Judge Reyes wasn’t buying that.
She was also miffed by the government’s claims that it didn’t know the final price tag of the plan, nor where the park service planned to get the money to repair the seawall, which alone will cost between $150 million and $400 million.
“You and the Department of Interior standing here today are not going to tell the American public how much it’s going to cost?” the judge said.
Mr. Woodward said it was normal for those budget matters not to be decided at this point, and he objected to Judge Reyes’ line of questioning, saying it’s strayed far from the point of the case.
“The court’s inquiry is unprecedented,” he said.
Judge Reyes has not forbidden construction but has demanded 10 days’ notice, which would give Mr. Trump’s opponents time to come to court to seek an injunction.
Her previous orders also constrained cutting of any more trees.
Friday’s hearing descended into the absurd at times, with the judge and the government’s lawyer debating over what a links-style golf course was and whether that question counted as a legal or a factual matter.
Judge Reyes suggested she’d been snookered for months as the government worked on its plans, even as it was telling her they didn’t exist.
She said the design the government is putting to the National Capital Planning Commission later Friday is “similar” to a design Interior Secretary Doug Burgum posted online in May and to a design Mr. Trump posted on Oct. 18.
She demanded to know why she hadn’t been told of that before the past few days.
The Justice Department tried to boot Judge Reyes from the case, saying she exhibited too much bias. She refused to recuse herself, acknowledging her fury but saying she’d overall been fair.
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